S Korean workers set to leave joint factory zone
27 April AFP
South Korean workers were due to start returning yesterday from a
jointly run industrial park in North Korea after Seoul announced a
complete withdrawal following months of military tensions.
The move plunges into doubt the future of the Kaesong complex once a
rare symbol of cooperation across the world's most heavily militarised
border, and a crucial source of hard currency for Kim Jong-Un's isolated
regime.
A frustrated South Korea said Friday that it had decided to pull its
remaining 175 workers from the site after Pyongyang rejected its
ultimatum to join formal negotiations on restarting the stalled
operations.
“The government has made the inevitable decision to withdraw all the
remaining people for their protection,” the South's Unification Minister
Ryoo Kihl-Jae said. South Korean companies with factories at the site
have expressed shock, with some threatening to ignore the evacuation in
an effort to protect their investments. A spokeswoman for the
Unification Ministry said 127 workers were expected to cross back over
the border in two convoys of vehicles on Saturday afternoon.
The remaining 48 people mostly government employees who manage the
complex as well as telecom and electrical engineers would be pulled out
on Monday, she said.
But a businessman with interests in Kaesong said many of the 123
South Korean companies who usually operate there were resisting the
move.
“Some say we should comply with the government request to pull out
but many others do not want to leave for fear of losing their
investment,” he told AFP, asking not to be named.
“Many of the employees remaining at Kaesong are also reluctant to
come back to the South as they will find it hard to find new jobs,” he
said, adding that the workers still had enough food.
The complex has fallen victim to a cycle of escalating tensions
triggered by the North's nuclear test in February, which came just over
a year after a young Kim Jong-Un took power following the death of his
father Kim Jong-Il.
Pyongyang, which has demanded the end of UN sanctions and a halt to
all South Korea-US joint military exercises, decided on April 3 to block
all South Korean access to Kaesong although it has allowed workers to
leave.
Days later, the North pulled out its 53,000-strong workforce and
suspended operations, angered by the South's mention of a “military”
contingency plan to protect its staff at the site.
“The next South Korean step could be to cut off electricity to the
complex before closing it permanently,” said Yang Moo-Jin, a professor
at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “South Korea's
strong response may result in the disappearance of the last remaining
point of contact and a prolonged confrontation between the two Koreas.”
Established in 2004, the complex lies 10 kilometres (six miles) inside
the North, which remains technically at war with the South after the
1950-53 Korean War was concluded with a ceasefire rather than a peace
treaty. Seoul has urged the North to guarantee the safe return of the
workers and to protect the assets of the companies at Kaesong.
Dismissing the offer of negotiations, the North's National Defence
Commission warned that Kaesong “is now on the verge of collapse”.
“This is entirely attributable to the reckless war hysteria of the
South Korean puppet regime,” it said in a statement.
The project was born out of the “Sunshine Policy” of inter-Korean
conciliation initiated in the late 1990s by then South Korean president
Kim Dae-Jung. It operates as a collaborative economic development zone
that hosts South Korean companies attracted by its source of cheap,
educated, skilled labour, with turnover in 2012 reported at $469.5
million.
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